THE FUTURE AS SEEN THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

As service providers roll out the first converged services for consumers and enterprises, fixed/mobile convergence solution vendors have a chance to get their name into the ring in a growing space, proving the mettle of their products while developing long-term relationships with providers.

One such vendor, NewStep Networks, has already made some noise in the past year, landing partnerships with BT and Embarq to use its Converged Services Node (CSN) to help deliver FMC.

“Our real innovation comes in the ability to manipulate sessions and to seamlessly hand sessions off across multiple networks without the carrier having to lose control of that session,” said Tracy Reigelman, director of U.S. sales for NewStep.

NewStep's CSN is an application server that uses signaling to control user sessions while enabling PBX features on mobile phones. The CSN can be hosted in a carrier's network, residing in any domain — fixed, mobile, broadband or enterprise — while working with pre-IMS and IMS architectures.

The CSN goes back to the company's Bell Canada days — NewStep spun off from it in 2003 — a period that sowed seeds for the partnership with Embarq. NewStep developers had worked with Sprint on session management software for BC call centers. When Embarq spun off from Sprint, the connection remained.

“As Embarq rolled out of Sprint, the guys at Embarq said, ‘Hey, we want to put this in because we think this is innovative, and we think this can give us a leading-edge solution and a significant differentiator in the marketplace,’” said Craig Gosselin, chief marketing officer for NewStep.

The Embarq-NewStep partnership was announced in June 2006, with Embarq rolling out the first Smart Connect services in October 2006 to six markets.

With the CSN in place, Smart Connect can switch calls from a wireless network to a corporate Wi-Fi network with the press of a button, as well as let users have one phone number and voicemail box for multiple devices. A more advanced service, Smart Connect Plus, incorporates a dual-mode handset exclusively from UT Starcom.

So far, Embarq's view of NewStep's role has been all positive, Reigelman said. In addition to BT and Embarq, NewStep has partnerships with fg microtec and Paragon Wireless. Gosselin said it also plans to announce several new deployments in the next two quarters.

Gosselin sees NewStep's versatility as a plus. (The CSN has three varieties, each offering increasing levels of features.) It's something he hopes will continue to set the company apart as FMC grows.

“I think one of the things that differentiates us against other little guys is our broad portfolio of services,” Gosselin said. “One of the things that helps us against some of the big players is that we work in a multivendor environment. And we're finding — especially large enterprises as well as carrier networks — there is a mix of equipment out there. You can't be vendor-specific in this space.”